The American Cable Assn. (ACA) is afraid the merger between News ...
The American Cable Assn. (ACA) is afraid the merger between News Corp. and DirecTV will give the new company too much power over small cable operators that compete with satellite. ACA Pres. Matthew Polka asked for strict federal oversight…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
of the deal. “Given the enormous vertical integration of Fox/News Corp. and DirecTV, the Federal Communications Commission, Congress and the Department of Justice must be actively involved to ensure that this vertical integration is not abused in any way,” he said. The ACA said federal agencies should focus on retransmission consent practices, consumer information about programming costs and possibilities of tiering and a la carte pricing, tying and bundling practices, ensuring regulatory parity between cable and satellite and extending program access laws and regulations to prevent self-dealing. Polka said News Corp. in the past had used tying and bundling of its services and had raised its rates in excess of inflation. The ACA asked the FCC to investigate the company’s retransmission consent practices, report them to Congress and provide protection through access regulations, retransmission consent regulations and other means.